Pick and Choose
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Torn and Frayed missing scene(s): Both brothers make their choice.


**Pick and Choose**  
K Hanna Korossy

He told Dean he needed to take a walk to clear his head. He wasn't sure now, though, what answers he thought he'd find in the trees around the cabin. It wasn't like their quiet murmurs would whisper to him whether he should stay with his brother—and the hunt—or return to Amelia, the woman he might love and start a real life with.

Sam filled his lungs with clean air and breathed it out slowly. There was that, at least.

Rufus must've gotten his cabin a long time ago, he mused while he walked. Whitefish is a resort town; just a few miles away are ski runs and pricey lodges. The land he was walking on had to be worth a considerable amount. But Rufus had bought enough of it that there was relative peace here, no tourists or skiers to risk running into. It was a rare quiet, and even through the turmoil in his heart and head, Sam appreciated it.

He could have this with Amelia.

Not in Whitefish, of course. Their lives, such as they were, were in Kermit, and that was where he'd return. Amelia had her vet business there, and Sam could find…something to do. Something normal. Maybe even go back to school. His past wouldn't survive the serious vetting a lawyer would need, but he's kinda soured on law anyway. Maybe anthropology, or ancient languages. Go with his strengths. He could teach at Odessa, or UTPB. Or maybe go younger, high school prof. Or library sciences? The possibilities were dizzying. And he'd have Amelia to go home to every night. With Don in the past, they could have a fresh start together.

But he couldn't fool himself. The ghosts of Don and Dean would linger.

Sam stopped to lean forward against a tree with both hands, doing stretches. The fight with the demons in Crowley's lair had left a few bruises. He thought about Dean hunting on his own, maybe seeing his brother once or twice a year as Dean passed through Texas, until one day he didn't. Living with the knowledge that his brother had died on a hunt, alone, when maybe Sam could've saved him if he'd been there…like he had not long ago on the Cacao hunt. Or, worse, never knowing what happened to his brother, Dean just vanishing into the wild.

Dean effectively gone from his life.

Helpless when the hunt came home to Sam, like it always seemed to eventually.

Knowing he _chose_ this, this time.

Sam straightened, arms dropping tiredly. Maybe there never even really had been a choice. Winchesters are fated to hunt. Maybe one day, when Heaven & Hell had settled, and they were too old for the demands of the hunt, and Dean chose to quit with him, maybe then they could pick a spot somewhere and put out a pair of rocking chairs on a porch, or marry sisters and become next-door neighbors, or…something else Sam couldn't imagine just now. But the thought of doing it without Dean, of making the break between them willing and permanent, made him physically ill in a way that, honestly, the thought of being without Amelia didn't.

Maybe there was more longing than love there, or a shared loss that neither of them had anymore. The loneliness Sam suffered was all by his choice now, Benny notwithstanding.

Benny. His eyes squeezed shut, fists clenching involuntarily. Dean told him to make a choice, but Dean himself hadn't. Okay, Benny wasn't exactly a siren call to a lover and a normal life, but still. If Dean chose him again over Sam, after Sam had given up everything…

His fists slowly loosened. Then it would still be because Benny got Dean out of Purgatory, and Sam hadn't. And that…that wasn't totally unfair.

He turned back to the cabin.

Both feet in or out. Both Dean and Amelia had said that. Sam couldn't help but wonder—again—what the two of them would think of each other. They'd probably bond over embarrassing Sam stories and a love of cheap beer. One foot in and one out, he'd let Dean down on a hunt, maybe bring home danger to Amelia like Dean had to Lisa. Both feet in, and he could have his brother's back, maybe eventually have his brother back completely. And Amelia could return to Don, to the roots that went far deeper into her heart than Sam's did.

Yeah, no real choice at all.

The cabin came into sight, and next to it, two cars: Martin's beat-up station wagon that Sam had arrived in, and the Impala, a block of deep black in the snowy landscape. Another kind of pang struck at the choice before him: the piece of junk whose owner he'd gotten killed, or the closest thing he'd ever had to a home, even after Stanford, after Amelia. If were honest with himself, he'd missed Baby, too.

That wasn't much of a decision, either.

If Sam was staying, he'd need his stuff. He squared his shoulders and headed toward the cars with sure steps.

00000

Sam was going to take a walk and think. Dean didn't fool himself as to what the outcome would be. If his brother hadn't chosen this, them, right there where Dean laid out his case, he probably wasn't going to be convinced by a bunch of trees and chipmunks. If anything, that desire for peace would remind him of just what Amelia was offering.

Dean took a breath and winced, thumping the top of his clenched fist over his heart as if that was where the pain was really lodged. His head still ached from Martin coldcocking him back in Louisiana, and the bruises he'd gotten on that hunt had just started healing up when Crowley's goons and his little butcher had freshened them up. Cas should've been backup, but Dean wasn't sure he could trust the angel right now, the squirrely way he was acting. If Sam hadn't been there…

Well. Wasn't like Dean wanted a long and happy solo hunting career, anyway.

The funny thing was, he really wanted Sammy to have that apple-pie life. Okay, so not while Dean was playing kill-or-be-killed in Purgatory, but ultimately, yeah. It was why he'd let Sam go when the kid wanted to leave for Stanford, why Dean had made a deal to bring him back to life, why he'd done all he could that year to prepare Sam for life without him, gotten his soul back, his sanity. For Dean himself too, sure, because he was a selfish son of a bitch who couldn't function in a world without Sam, but also because he would give up everything for Sam to have a life.

Did that everything include Benny?

He opened his hand, surprised to find it was clutching his phone. He couldn't even remember pulling it out. Benny was waiting to hear from him, for Dean to come be his AA sponsor. Dean owed him.

But he'd asked Sam to give up love for him, and Sam had asked him to give up Benny. How could he expect his brother to choose him if he wasn't willing to do the same?

He fisted his hand around the phone, feeling the edges bite into his palm.

Dean didn't give up on people. Benny had proved himself, had become family like Bobby or Pastor Jim or Ellen and Jo. It wasn't right to just dump him, even if Dean had repaid that debt.

They could always hunt together. If he lost Sam, Dean had no heart to keep hunting alone. But he could train Benny, was willing to bet the vamp would happily stay by his side to keep Dean's friendship and support. Dean already knew they made a good team. He could even stop in at Sam and Amelia's whenever they were in the area. Didn't have to mean he'd never see Sam again.

Until Sam had enough of Dean bringing death to his door. Or their past caught up to Sam when he wasn't expecting it. Or Dean's partner of a year made a mistake his partner of a lifetime wouldn't have, and Dean had to check out without a chance to say goodbye. Any of that could happen; chances were one of them would.

And he and Sam would never really be the same, even without the physical distance. Dean couldn't help remembering his little brother's face when Dean had been influenced to say that Benny was more of a brother than Sam, or when he'd told Sam that Benny had never let him down. Sam's, _Must feel great, finally finding someone you can trust after all these years._ Dean had been the one to set Benny up as Sam's rival. He'd been the one to drive that splinter into his brother's heart. He'd been the one to kill Ruby, that evil skank, and Amy, the far more innocent monster, then insisted Sam could trust Benny.

 _What the hell do we do now?_

 _That depends. It depends on you. On whether or not you're done with him._

Sam was asking him to choose, too. Dean didn't like it—hated it, in fact—but…he kinda understood it.

 _Her or me, Sammy? That depends: Benny or me?_

He looked blindly up, out the window. Started at the sight of Sam heading that way. No, not to the cabin: to the cars, moving with determination. Dean's heart sank. Sam had made his choice but didn't want to face Dean with it. He'd probably get a text when Sam was a few miles down the road.

Dean uncurled his fingers, looking at the phone in his hand. That should make the decision easy.

When it came down to it, there had never really been a choice between Sam and anything else. It was Sam over Dad. Sam over Dean's soul. Sam over Bobby and Lisa and Cas. Sammy over the freakin' world. Not because of any ultimatums. Just because he was Sam.

But even if Sam was out for good, choosing Benny would still be not choosing Sam, and Dean…Dean couldn't stomach that, either. Even if it left him alone. Sam had asked him to decide, and Dean would, no matter what his brother did.

He pulled up Benny on his contact list, paused for a moment, then hit the Call button.

00000

He'd seen the surprise in Dean's eyes when he walked in. His brother hadn't expected his return. That maybe would've made Sam angry a week before, but now it just saddened him. When had they stopped counting on each other?

"So, uh." He hefted the duffel in his hand, saw Dean's eyes move blankly down to it, then back to him. "I'm staying. All in."

Dean blinked at him, phone tight in the hand clenched against his side. "What about…?"

Sam sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. "She'll know what I chose. And she's got Don." The thought of her still made his heart twinge, but it wasn't nearly the pain of saying goodbye to Jess, and that confirmed what he'd already thought about how much of what they had was love and how much was just comfort.

Dean was nodding. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Uh." He looked a little lost, like this was the one thing he wasn't prepared for. "…You wanna watch the fight?" he finally asked with a nod at the TV.

Sam swallowed, grabbing the rope he'd been thrown. "Sounds good. Uh, we still got some of that chili in the freezer?"

"Yeah, go for it. I'll set up the TV."

"Okay." Sam dropped his duffel by the couch and headed to the small kitchen.

And that was all the discussion they'd have, he knew. They'd watch the game and eat their weight in chili. Dean would turn out to have stocked Sam's favorite beer, and Sam would pull out the package of licorice he had tucked away in his bag. They would make fun of the match and the food and each other. At some point, Dean would get quiet, and silently tip his beer to Sam's in a toast. And that would be it: the past forgiven and forgotten, Dean no longer looking at him like he was the great disappointment of Dean's life. Moving on to the next hunt together, or to this crazy quest Kevin was researching, or just to the next state over to hit some road food stand Dean swore had the best pulled pork.

No more furtive calls from Benny, either, because before he'd walked in and seen Dean's shock at his choice, Sam had stood on the other side of the door and, stunned, heard Dean on the phone, making his.

And that was when he'd known they were really back.

 **The End**


End file.
